Game Guides, Anxiety and Feeling Lost
I’m an anxious person. I’m the sort of person who’ll hide in bed and let things turn into a chaotic mess if they haven’t planned out exactly what they’ll do all day. My stomach still drops out from under me when I think about the times my dad had to use a map to get us out of the airport city we landed in on family holidays, only to realise we were all deeply lost in a foreign country. Right now as I write this I’ve had one cup of coffee and my leg is jittering like an over-excited puppy. What I’m saying is I don’t deal well with uncertainty. Which is why over the last few years game guides have become an essential part of my set up during any time I spend in front of video games.
Wait… Weren’t you in the kitchen a minute ago?
NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, FUCKING NO!
I played through all of Resident Evil 2 Remake checking my phone for tips, while I completed Resident Evil 7: Biohazard with Jeffery Parkin’s step by step walkthrough from Polygon guiding me through the creaky old Baker house hidden in the Louisiana swamp. One reason I can play horror games with guides is because I have always preferred the drawn-out tension and gnarly creature designs of RE more than the jump scares. Reading ahead meant I knew what was coming and I could almost savour dreading the inevitable, rather than always be clenching for a cheap jumpscare. But, a much bigger reason is that I hate, and I mean hate, feeling lost.
When playing horror games there is power in choosing to continue forward, to fight on, to make your way deeper into the evil that awaits. However, wandering the floors as Grandma Baker and her wheelchair change location, circling back around winding hallways and crawl spaces with no idea where to go or what to do? That’s powerlessness, that isn’t frightening, it is just upsetting.
I’ve also found that this strategy of guiding myself through games has made less linear and more sprawling games much more enjoyable too. I love exploring a good open world and player agency can be pretty dang cool when used well, but I’ve never been good with too many choices. I freeze up. Especially when I don’t know which one is the right, or even the best, thing to do for me to get where I need to be.
Want to hang out? I swear I’m cool.
When I played Persona 5 back in 2017, I’d spend minutes on end trying to figure out what the best way to spend my time was at every decision point. Even when I had characters I wanted to spend time with I wouldn’t know how best to level up my stats so that I could spend time with them. It created this feeling where no matter what I did, I felt like I was doing the wrong thing. This was epitomised when I wanted to hang with my cool-goth-back-alley-doctor-friend, Tae Takemi, only for the game to tell me I needed more “Guts”. So I went about improving that stat the only way I knew how (at the time), eating a boatload of Big Bang Burgers. This took days but eventually it worked and I got to spend my time with Tae. The problem was the next day I returned to the clinic and she just didn’t want to hang. It didn’t matter how gutsy I was, her storyline was on pause till a later date in the game’s main narrative. All that time wasted and unoptimised. I could have slowly gained “Guts” over the course of a few weeks while hanging out with other friends and passing the time in ways other than stuffing my face in a cheesy fast food joint, but no, I had inefficiently burned precious days wasting my time only to come to another roadblock. It stung. I felt like I fucked up.
Some games mitigate this problem. In Breath of the Wild every route and choice feels like a rewarding or, for lack of a better term, correct thing to do. On top of this, you are certainly not there to min/max Link, you’re roaming Hyrule, luxuriating in it. But, there too came a time when the inscrutability of the game led to me feeling put off. I really wanted to dye some armour, I knew I needed to collect some dyes but I had no idea how to find them, or make them or what I had to do. I spent hours bumming around towns, investigating ruins and more. That was until one day I managed to snag ten minutes on a computer (don’t ask why I didn’t have access to the internet for days on end playing that game or we’ll be here forever). One Google search later and Link had some dope purple armour that very same night. I understand why a developer wouldn’t want to spell out everything for a player, but sometimes we all get lost reading a map in a foreign city and need to ask for directions.
Guides really have had a profoundly positive impact on my relationship with games and I don’t know where I’d be without them or their writers. That being said, it is truly a shame how little we as a community acknowledge their importance. Websites upon websites post guides and guides for all manner of games because the analytics back up the idea that we all need a helping hand. Maybe it is a shame thing? The Dark Souls “Git Gud” mentality worming its way into the collective subconscious of those that game over the last few decades, resulting in most people acting like guides don’t exist and if they did *gasp, horror* “I would never been seen using one”.
With all that being said I just wanted this piece to serve as a small thank you to guide writers. Thanks for helping us along the way and never making us feel stupid for missing that key or not knowing how to upgrade your sword. Thanks for somehow making a road map fun to read. Thanks for making it all feel a little bit less like it is all too much. It’s not much considering everything you have to deal with. But it’s something.
Most of all I wanted to show my appreciation to my first video game sherpa and guide. My older brother.
Come to think of it might brother might have been fucking with me when they convinced me to base my first build around the “Large Club”.
Before I realised I could ask the internet for answers to anything I’d spend hours in front of the PlayStation; not playing, but watching and learning. For years I’d sit next to them while he explored the open areas of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger making note of where collectables were only to come back later and grab them myself. I’d watch them achieve what I could never manage as they dispatched Bowser into space and saved Peach. As I got older I’d study the dialogue options and quest decisions they’d make while playing Fallout, figuring out how to get inside the New Vegas walls or how to deal with Megaton without accidentally killing hundreds. When we went for walks on those family holidays I’d try to force him to peel off with me and explain Dark Souls’ story and builds that might work for me. He’d learnt the language of games and I hadn’t but he didn’t make me feel bad about it. I was just overwhelmed by it all at that time and he wasn’t. Without their guidance I was terrified in these big worlds full of threats and too many opportunities. But with their help and now with the help of game guide writers? Well, it’s dangerous to go alone… So don’t.
